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How a call girl can earn far more by actually working far less

entertainment.timesonline.co.uk

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Re: How a call girl can earn far more by actually working far less

#141

Post by zeteo »

_pius wrote: post #117
yummyfajitas wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've got a great theory. And yet, it somehow does not fit the data. As of 2001 (the most recent data I've seen), more than 2/3 of poor households had at least 2 rooms/person, and only 6% were overcrowded. Just under 3/4 owned a car. http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2004/01/understandi... In the same year, 80% of the poor neither had nor were looking for a job, so bus fare is irrelevant to most of them. (Thi…

It fits. The Heritage Foundation study assailed the Census Bureau's definition of poverty. My point made no comment about that; I was just debunking the idea that a family of four can live "easily" on a single minimum wage income, which is preposterous.

" I was just debunking the idea that a family of four can live "easily" on a single minimum wage income, which is preposterous."

An idea that you made up yourself to fight with, and was never supported by anyone else. If karma points were made of straw, you'd be the undisputed champion.

Re: How a call girl can earn far more by actually working far less

#142

Post by _pius »

zeteo wrote: post #140
_pius wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"...a single person on full-time minimum wage can easily feed and house a family of four." With all due respect, you don't know what you're talking about. It's not "societal expectations" that cause lots of gainfully employed people in the United States to be part of the working poor and hungry. As an example, the minimum wage in DC is $8.25, which yields $1320/month. The actual amount would be even lower after taxes…

Either you can't read and understand an argument, or you haven't paid attention to the context and the point I was making. I never claimed you're going to live a happy and fulfilling life on minimum wage, that's just a straw man that you chose to put up. Engaging in such "tactics" for a couple of karma points is BS at best and dishonest at worst. The grand-parent claim for my post is "a single person income is not en…

I never claimed you're going to live a happy and fulfilling life on minimum wage, that's just a straw man that you chose to put up.

Actually, I didn't claim you said that. I simply quoted you saying that "one can easily feed and house a family of four" on a minimum wage income. That's an actual statement you made and I rebutted ... I'm looking at those exact words from you on the screen right now. So where's the strawman? Or the lack of reading comprehension? Or are you actually claiming that you didn't say it?

Re: How a call girl can earn far more by actually working far less

#143

Post by _pius »

zeteo wrote: post #141
_pius wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It fits. The Heritage Foundation study assailed the Census Bureau's definition of poverty. My point made no comment about that; I was just debunking the idea that a family of four can live "easily" on a single minimum wage income, which is preposterous.

" I was just debunking the idea that a family of four can live "easily" on a single minimum wage income, which is preposterous." An idea that you made up yourself to fight with, and was never supported by anyone else. If karma points were made of straw, you'd be the undisputed champion.

It occurs to me that you may not know what a strawman is. It's not attacking a strawman if I'm rebutting a direct quotation from you.

Re: How a call girl can earn far more by actually working far less

#144

Post by zeteo »

_pius wrote: post #142
zeteo wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Either you can't read and understand an argument, or you haven't paid attention to the context and the point I was making. I never claimed you're going to live a happy and fulfilling life on minimum wage, that's just a straw man that you chose to put up. Engaging in such "tactics" for a couple of karma points is BS at best and dishonest at worst. The grand-parent claim for my post is "a single person income is not en…

I never claimed you're going to live a happy and fulfilling life on minimum wage, that's just a straw man that you chose to put up. Actually, I didn't claim you said that. I simply quoted you saying that "one can easily feed and house a family of four" on a minimum wage income. That's an actual statement you made and I rebutted ... I'm looking at those exact words from you on the screen right now. So where's the stra…

Your post, which I quote below, shows that in DC, on minimum wage, you can cover rent, utilities and bus fare for a family of four, and still have about $200 a month left for food. It's exactly my claim, plus I claim that the said $200 are enough to buy ingredients if you cook at home. Is it a great life? No. But it would be OK if you had an _average_ salary for the working person instead. If the person staying at home cooked, did groceries and spent time with the kids, those kids would probably have an even better life than one based on the XBox and microwave dinners.

"As an example, the minimum wage in DC is $8.25, which yields $1320/month. The actual amount would be even lower after taxes, but let's even forget about that.

About the absolute rock bottom price you'll pay for a room in this city is $600/month and that's assuming you're in a group living situation or a pretty bad neighborhood. Since a family of four will need two rooms to be even reasonably comfortable, maybe you luck out and grab a similarly crappy two-bedroom for $900/month. So now, you pay your rent, somehow keep your utilities hovering around $120/month (good luck with that) and you've got $300/month left.

But wait, now you've got to get to work (and to the grocery store, etc.). Minimum bus fare in this city is $1.50. If you (and just you, not your kids or spouse) make a round trip every day plus, say, three extra trips a month, you will spend about $100.

So now you've got $200 per month left to feed and clothe four people. But what about insurance? Savings? Unforeseen expenses? Doing something nice with your kids every now and again?"

Re: How a call girl can earn far more by actually working far less

#145

Post by zeteo »

_pius wrote: post #143
zeteo wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" I was just debunking the idea that a family of four can live "easily" on a single minimum wage income, which is preposterous." An idea that you made up yourself to fight with, and was never supported by anyone else. If karma points were made of straw, you'd be the undisputed champion.

It occurs to me that you may not know what a strawman is. It's not attacking a strawman if I'm rebutting a direct quotation from you.

My quotation was "a single person on full-time minimum wage can easily feed and house a family of four". This you confirmed, and it says nothing about other desirable expenses, such as savings, nice clothing and health insurance. The straw man you made out of it is

"I was just debunking the idea that a family of four can live "easily" on a single minimum wage income".

That's BS, my friend.

Re: How a call girl can earn far more by actually working far less

#146

Post by kragen »

aresant wrote: post #2

Disclaimer: Freakonomics to me embodies modern business writing at its worst. Anecdotal, single case half-correlations that try to pretend they’re something more than fluff entertainment. In this article, they truly don’t disappoint. A hilarious and misguided glorification of what, I imagine, is a soul crushing business for 99/100 prostitutes. Written like a recruiting pamphlet, to boot. And the answer to how a prost…

I recommend talking to prostitutes or reading about their lives instead of imagining them. Sudhir has talked to a bunch of them, I've talked to a few, you imply you haven't. There's a lot of diversity among prostitutes, which the article does a better job of representing than you do. I think you'll have to look long and hard before finding anything that's true of 99/100 prostitutes.

There are certainly plenty of people whose souls have been crushed by prostitution, but it's by no means a universal experience.

Reliable statistics are quite difficult to come by. I strongly suspect that people like "Allie" don't show up in the denominators of the stats you cite in your other comment. Farley and Barkan (where the about.com article got its stats) were interviewing street prostitutes, not all prostitutes; the KISS 95.1 page doesn't cite any sources, so they probably just made up their numbers, but still, being 99.8% certain of not dying on the job doesn't seem like a major risk. It seems like the possibly high risk of being raped or otherwise traumatized is more relevant.

Re: How a call girl can earn far more by actually working far less

#147

Post by _pius »

zeteo wrote: post #145
_pius wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It occurs to me that you may not know what a strawman is. It's not attacking a strawman if I'm rebutting a direct quotation from you.

My quotation was "a single person on full-time minimum wage can easily feed and house a family of four". This you confirmed, and it says nothing about other desirable expenses, such as savings, nice clothing and health insurance. The straw man you made out of it is "I was just debunking the idea that a family of four can live "easily" on a single minimum wage income". That's BS, my friend.

Wow, this has become petty thread crapping on your part and I'm not going to help. I'm done.

Re: How a call girl can earn far more by actually working far less

#148

Post by kragen »

tianaco wrote: post #132

"So the real puzzle isn’t why someone like Allie becomes a prostitute, but rather why more women don’t choose this career." Most women don't do this because of the social stigma, and those that don't care about the social stigma don't do it because they don't want to contract STDs--in particular, Genital Herpes which can be transmitted through skin-to-skin contact. I'm surprised that the article didn't examine the he…

> Most women don't do this because of the social stigma, and those that don't care about the social stigma don't do it because they don't want to contract STDs

You know, some people don't do it because they don't want to, just like there are plenty of people who don't collect garbage because they don't want to.

Re: How a call girl can earn far more by actually working far less

#149

Post by kragen »

maxklein wrote: post #16

I'm not sure if what they are saying applies to the first girl they speak about. A street hooker cannot easily transition to a highly paid escort. You need to be pretty and young at least, to earn that much. And the street hookers, if they increased their prices, would have no customers.

Also, Allie is almost certainly white, and she had a lot of money and skill to invest into things like house furnishings and building a web site.

Re: How a call girl can earn far more by actually working far less

#150

Post by kragen »

brc wrote: post #64
rokhayakebe wrote: post #3

$300/hour? That is one of the highest paying job i ever heard of.

So many jobs that pay that sort of cash. They're just not easy to get. It's that old 10,000 hours of practice thing again. If you're willing to build up a lot of experience in an arcane technical field that is in continuous demand, you can easily get that sort of cash, particularly in short-term fly-in-and-fix-the-thing gigs. I know of COBOL programmers in a bank that make $150/hr because they are irreplaceable now.…

I met a COBOL programmer from a bank a few months ago. He was driving a taxi.
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